After taking a week to think about it: okay, STORYBLITZ was, for the most part, a success. Publishing twenty stories in seven days took a prodigious effort, but we pulled it off. Publishing twelve stories in twelve hours was a stretch goal that bordered on ludicrous...
Jackson always calls hyperspace the “waters of oblivion.” It seems an odd affectation, out of character with the rest of his carefree personality. His parents are both dead and he has no close relatives; he’s told me he plans to work the hyperspace runs until he’s thirty and then retire young and wealthy...
Unlike most of his brethren, the dragon Slagadune slept with both eyes closed, for he could smell any intruder foolhardy enough to stumble into his cave. A single blast of his blazing breath would turn the hardest steel to ash and melt skin and bones to butter. What’s more...
“Listen, Exorcist, I’ve cracked it. I’m in. I’m in right now. You have got to see this.” On the other side of the world, the hacker Firestarter knew only as Exorcist laughed. They’d routed the VoIP connection through two anonymising proxies, which made the conversation annoyingly laggy...
Loki crashed back into reality, gasping and reeling. He flailed with his arms until he realized that he was no longer falling. The bitterness of his last host’s fear lingered on his tongue. Her mortal flesh had been burned and torn apart, with him trapped and powerless within. Loki swallowed hard...
[Part 1 | Part 2] A great flapping of leathery wings overhead jerked Gris out of a sound sleep. Thomas was curled against his stomach, and they both looked up at the same time, catching a glimpse of green dragonhide through the branches. “Bloody hell,” Mac breathed next to him...
The little cybernetic gadfly popped up as soon as I logged in. “Dave Miller,” it dutifully nagged, “you are now 15 minutes overdue for your appointment with the company fitness consultant.” Right. I clicked the ‘ignore’ button to kill the message and then continued with my morning routine...
Toby stared at his ticket: Bus 666 to Hell. After a lifetime in politics, always with the best intentions, this was his reward? The last thing he remembered were chest pains and falling to the ground...
[Part 1] Dani woke with an unfamiliar weight on her hip, and she was reaching for her knife before she quite knew what was happening. “Of course,” a familiar voice said. “Kill first, ask questions once it’s too late.”...
Late one evening, the sound of fluttering wings disturbed a suburbanite who was sitting in his easy chair, reading a book. The man got up to investigate, quickly assessed the situation, and then yelled at the top of his lungs...
“You see? By carefully tracking the field, we’ll be able to find mass, even types otherwise undetectable.” “Hmm… might just work. Let’s do it.”...
The local dragon had made its annual demand for a new cat for its collection. Arms crossed, Daniella stared the village mayor down. She knew what he was thinking—that she was a silly little girl with no business undertaking such a vital enterprise. He’d turned it into a competition...
Sebastian Kane flew across the second floor of the mansion like his ass was on fire and his head was catchin’. His blue shirt was torn and bloody, his jeans were rags and equally as red, his chest would need an entire spool of thread to put back together, and he would be eating soup [&hellip...
The hunchback reminded Cassius of his first servant, Grimly. The gorilla-like-arms, heavy brow, and dull eyes; it was as if Grimly had returned from the Abyss. Cassius supposed that’s why he agreed to interview Erogi in the first place...
Dr. Edward “Eddie” McDaniels knew that if there were two things that went together, it was horrible weather and revenge-obsessed undead. And that night, the weather was positively crappy. Wave after wave of heavy, autumn rain crashed against the sliding glass door. In the center of the living room, Eddie waited...
On a morning in late October, the alien stepped out of his spaceship into the bright morning sun in the Boston Commons. For all intents and purposes, Gomph looked like an oversized porcupine. At 60 kilograms, he stood nearly one-and-a-half meters tall...
The heavy ceramic angel sitting high on the shelf above the sliding glass door was perfect for what Sham, the ethereal, had in mind. That fat, orange cat had to die. Its death was the only way he could become a real ghost...
TRANSACTION COMPLETE **PLEASE READ THIS FULL DISCLAIMER BEFORE CLOSING** Thank you for pressing the “Accept” option on the previous page and legally completing the transfer of ownership of rights and obligations of authorship in the work of fiction entitled My Five Minutes in Hell (MFMIH), penned by Howard Phillips Derbury sometime in ...
In retrospect, I should’ve realized there was something bizarre about Analyn much earlier than I did, certainly before we’d been dating for six weeks. But I was a college freshman, barely away from my overprotective mother, and eager to live life...
I’d been born and raised in sunny Florida, so isn’t it ironic that the one thing I fear most in life is a night-stalking bloodsucker? I’ve spent many nights staring out my bedroom window at eyes glaring back at me from the trees. My friends and family think I’m crazy, of course...
